Let's be clear: It’s our perception of reality that is subjective

Philosophy
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W4U, an attempt to reboot.

Weareinthematrix,

Cc: The thing is it’s our perception of reality that’s subjective - not reality itself.

W4U, Giving that lip service isn’t enough.

Lip service is when that key understanding doesn’t changed anything about one’s fundamentally self-centered outlook upon the reality we find ourselves in. Such as that contrived riddle up there.

My issue this that, it’s our evolutionary origins, that’s where the keys to understanding our consciousness (and about everything else) reside.

Instead, I keep hearing talking geniuses inviting everyone to jump off the metaphysical cliff, toward some hypothesized higher understanding of fundamental reality, such as Hoffmanian Conscious Agents zipping around interpreting reality for us.

Or perhaps even uglier example, broadcasting that space and time is doomed. All on account of some men’s imagined formulas breaking down. It’s cringe worthy but gets applauded for its audacity. Now that’s delusional thinking if anything is.

When the most fundamental reality we need to face and digest is that we ourselves and our great imaginations are creatures born of Earth over the course of billions of years through uncountable generations.

If we want to understand who we are, we must look at our mammalian ancestors, instead we get optical illusions dangled in front of us as though understanding how they happen does anything to resolve anything deeper than brain architecture and mechanics. Worthy studies for sure, but not key to understanding human consciousness.

I can’t conceive of how that notion (optical illusions is key to consciousness) is possible without totally ignoring that we are evolutionary creatures, we are direct mammalian descendants.

That suggestion about 1+1=2. A physical object next to another physical object, make a pair or two objects. It simply IS.

The numbers are simple human tools for conceptualizing. What’s wrong with that? I’d like to know. ‘Cause here I go again,

The “physical reality” itself is there. It is ultimate and inescapable, in all its dynamic majesty. It is what created creatures that got ever better at trying to perceive it, in order to navigate it better.

We started out as little biological creatures trying to make their way through life, adapting as needs required, developing emergent properties galore.

Understanding all that doesn’t require us to go to the edge of physical reality either quantum or cosmic - the answers are to be found here in the middle ground that our Earth exists within.

Not that I’m knocking studying those other things. It’s cool and important but let’s learn to stop mixing apples with meat balls.

As for facts themselves, we can come up with all sorts of philosophical games about “facts.” Since they are dependent on measurements and recording, meaning that with more measurements, facts get refined.

So it’s worth mentioning, ”Facts” aren’t carved in stone, so to speak, they are dependent on our ability to gather data and on our perceptions of the said data.

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And in fact, I never hear evolution mentioned in anything I’ve watched or read on the topic of, optical illusions offer insights into human consciousness.

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Here’s an example of totally inappropriate self-centered fluff that scientific information is injected with:

Our visual system sometimes does OK at identifying objects in our peripheral vision, but when those objects are placed near other objects, it struggles. This is a shocking limitation on our conscious vision. The letters are clearly presented right in front of us. But still our conscious mind gets confused.

One simply needs to study eyes and brain as instruments to understand the dynamics of how they gather information to realize it makes all the sense in the world. Doing the best with limited resources, which is how it’s always been.

Physics of the Eye

LumenLearning .com

Oh this article looks to be pretty interesting in it’s own right. An excellent compliment to the first.

The Camera Versus the Human Eye

There won’t be any direct benefit from this article that will let you run out and take better photographs, but you might find it interesting. You may also find it incredibly boring, so I’ll give you my conclusion first, in the form of two quotes from Garry Winogrand:

A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera ‘saw’ a piece of time and space.

Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.

Basically in doing all this research about how the human eye is like a camera, what I really learned is how human vision is not like a photograph. In a way, it explained to me why I so often find a photograph much more beautiful and interesting than I found the actual scene itself. …

By ROGER CICALA, PetaPixel.com, NOV 17, 2012,

It’s really an excellent article and I went trawling through a bunch. Good images to help with the text.

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I’ve left some stuff out that I should have - one could argue “planning” is a form of hallucination . . .

so complex “thinking” is a form of hallucinating, if one wants to play it that way . . .

But, when it comes to “sensing” - that’s processing incoming information, with algorithms, filtering and composing data into images . . . (Of course with the quality of the images, dependent on the quality of the instrument.)

The problem with the intellectual predators for fun and profit is when they use what’s going on within our senses and minds, to imply that the physical world out there is something subjective.

Without pointing out the all important - That it’s “OUR PERCEPTION” that’s a subjective rendering of the outside reality

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I have ! I agree with you on many points. My take on the whole question is that humans may have been the recipient of a beneficial chromosomal mutation that made us much too smart for our own good.

Instead of living in harmony with nature we have learned to rape and destroy our own environment and we may just become a victim of our own greed.

Biology has already classified humans as an invasive species. And we know what happens to species that replace all other necessary species for a healthy eco-system and pollute our natural resources that sustain us.
We are special, and that just made us very dangerous to ourselves.

Result…extinction!

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Show me something that goes beyond lip service.

evolutionary game theory does not count!

What question would that be?

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[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:1, topic:8486”]
I can’t conceive of how that notion (optical illusions is key to consciousness) is possible without totally ignoring that we are evolutionary creatures, we are direct mammalian descendants.

No one is ignoring anything. It seems to me that you are assigning something magical to consciousness. I don’t. I believe consciousness is an evolved refinement of sensory abilities by natural selection of beneficial chromosomal growth instructions.

[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:2, topic:8486”]
And in fact, I never hear evolution mentioned in anything I’ve watched or read on the topic of, optical illusions offer insights into human consciousness .

There is no single answer to the question

The “hard question” of what is “consciousness” and how did it evolve. There is no single answer to that question because we don’t even know what we are asking.

We can only try to assess what conscious organisms have in common that points to a simple fundamental concept. This requires the search for common denominators in all conscious organisms.

IMO, the single most important fact to consider is that there is no “irreducible complexity” and that all natural phenomena are an evolved result of three elementary particles , each with specific and different value characteristics, “flavors” (abstract potentials).

These elementary particles were spontaneously created from the cooling plasma, following the BB and were responsible for the first mathematical patterns emerging from the initial chaos. (Chaos Theory)

Quintessence

In physics, quintessence is a hypothetical form of dark energy, more precisely a scalar field, postulated as an explanation of the observation of an accelerating rate of expansion of the universe. The first example of this scenario was proposed by Ratra and Peebles (1988).[1]

The concept was expanded to more general types of time-varying dark energy and the term “quintessence” was first introduced in a 1998 paper by Robert R. Caldwell, Rahul Dave and Paul Steinhardt.[2] It has been proposed by some physicists to be a fifth fundamental force.[3][4][5][6]

Quintessence differs from the cosmological constant explanation of dark energy in that it is dynamic; that is, it changes over time, unlike the cosmological constant which, by definition, does not change. Quintessence can be either attractive or repulsive depending on the ratio of its kinetic and potential energy. Those working with this postulate believe that quintessence became repulsive about ten billion years ago, about 3.5 billion years after the Big Bang
Quintessence (physics) - Wikipedia

IMO, that is where the evolution of consciousness begins. The inherent deterministic causal (action -->reaction) nature of the physical universe.

David Bohm posited that the inherent potentials of things “imply” certain mathematically prescribed behaviors, which may become “explicated” in reality.
He called this the “Implicate Order”.

IOW each physical object is governed by the mathematical permissions and restrictions of its inherent potentials. All Universal Laws and Forces are based on the inherent potentials of physical objects.

This is why I consider a mathematical universe as being inherently quasi-intelligent, it seems to imitate intelligent behaviors, based on naturally Logical principles, like 1 + 1 = 2

If you think of it all equations share common quasi-intelligent mathematical functions.

IMO, these apparently intelligent behaviors are responsible for the assumption of a motivated intelligent universal agency, a god. But that is a hallucinatory assumption, which already started with the earliest hominids, even before we evolved via a chromosomal mutation into humans and split off from the other line of great apes.

I’ll leave it at this for now. But this is just an introduction to my “mindscape” of the universe.

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Exactly, 1+1=2 is a human symbolic representation of an inherently logical natural formula.
It just IS in reality and humans have called it “mathematical” and "codified’ it.

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Post 7 is a wonder example.

Then your post goes for straight for the metaphysical.

This is an excellent example of merely paying evolution lip service, them skipping off into the light fantastical .

Answers that will do us humans any good won’t be found in obsessing over the heavens, or subatomic particles or mathematical patterns, but in the actual processes unfolding down f’n here on Earth. In better understanding our animal relatives and our connections to them. In better understanding how we evolved out of this fantastical planet.

I don’t say the rest of that is worthless, it’s fascinating as heck, but when it comes to understanding us and our human condition, it’ll never do. The general schizophrenia and disconnect from reality and plugging into the mass media boob-tube is evidence enough for that.

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Can you exactly point out where I was speaking metaphysically.
I cited hard facts to make my points, all the way through.

How do you see “metaphysical”?

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The mathematics obsession.
Not that I knock its importance, or how it can describe everything.

Just that we humans can only get so much out of that fundamental. If we really want to understand the human condition we can only do it by staying within our middle ground reality of our Earth and her process and the story of biology how creatures learned to master most everything. Along with how incredibly it’s all interconnected and thus interdependent.

Although this one stops me in my tracks because it nails something important and though I’d have never formulated those words myself, I do agree. Well said.

Perhaps the it’s simply a perspective thing, the difference is between the spirit that prefers the mind and
the spirit that loves to dance; the flesh, the passions, and the blood, sweat and tears.

Narcissus and Goldmund

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But then again, no. It gets back to how profoundly idiotic we have treated the world and ourselves. It’s about the avenue that could have saves us. That is learning about an appreciation Earth’s evolution, thus learning to respect our biosphere, thus understanding it was our responsibility to nurture, it was also our responsibility to keep our numbers low. Instead we bred like drunken rabbits.
While always demanding to consume more.

Utterly openly self-destructive behavior of drunken spoiled rich kid frats.

Always driving the conversation into the outer realms, where we had no responsibility. Holding earth in contempt because our lofty philosophizing was soo much cooler.

Yada, yada, yada

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I agree completely. But by ignoring or rejecting these fundamental truths we invite the harvest of wanton use of these fundamental principles. “As you sow, so shall you reap”

Using nature’s potentials we can destroy our environment, and we have been doing it for a couple of centuries and still going strong. Hence the start of the 6th extinction event, also known as the “Anthropocene epoch” ( man-made ).

Anthropocene

Description

The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change. (Anthropocene - Wikipedia)

Remarkably, this was foretold in the biblical allegory of Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden when they disobeyed the Law. i.e. Natural Law.

Except it happened a few hundred thousand years later, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The terrible truth is that this shows we have known these things for a long time and ignored them to satisfy our greed and egocentric behaviors.

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[quote=“write4u, post:13, topic:8486”]

write4u:
By ignoring or rejecting these fundamental truths we invite the harvest of wanton use of these fundamental principles.

Hey, your cribbing off my speech. :slight_smile:

Maybe we should give it a rest - then pick it up on Godfrey-Smith’s thread, after you’ve had a chance to listen to it.
The audio is available on YouTube, free.

(https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374537197)* (2016), Godfrey-Smith, professor of history and the philosophy of science at the University of Sydney, rewinds the clock to recount the evolution of consciousness from the time life first appeared 4 billion years ago.

1 Like
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I should make it clear, once again, that I’m not against learning about quantum weirdness, or the outer limits of math and physics, but let’s keep it real. There is the realm of the experts and then realm of the rest of us under-educated wannabes, who’s gradient of knowledge is a few magnitudes below the experts. The problem is many wannabes fancy themselves as smart, or smarter than full time experts.

It’s the blinkered public dialogue, not facts of the various fields of science, that drives me nuts.

That’s why I’m trying to be very specific and clear about my claims and complaints.

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[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:14, topic:8486”]
Maybe we should give it a rest - then pick it up on Godfrey-Smith’s thread, after you’ve had a chance to listen to it.
The audio is available on YouTube, free.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374537197

(2016), Godfrey-Smith, professor of history and the philosophy of science at the University of Sydney, rewinds the clock to recount the evolution of consciousness from the time life first appeared 4 billion years ago.

Thanks CC4 , for posting this link to one of the most informative lectures I have come across.

I want to acknowledge the importance of this History of the evolution of Consciousness.

A WONDERFUL NARRATIVE!!! (live lecture with illustrations.)

I give it a rating of image

and for good measure:

1 Like
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I looked through this thread and I think I missed the point, but also read enough that it looks interesting. Particularly, the 1 + 1 = 2 parts, and the scientific experts viewpoints. If you think about it, 1 + 1 is context sensitive so to speak. Combine one raindrop with another, and you get one raindrop. Context is obtaining a count. If the context is volume, then one volume of something plus another is double the volume. But again, context. As for the experts, absolutely way way smarter then me as far as the math, but they’re working with descriptions, not the thing itself. I forget which famous physicist said it, but it was basically Don’t mistake the description of a thing with the thing itself.

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:+1:

Another version I especially like:

Don’t mistake the map for the territory.

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Ooh that’s much better!

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Yes this is also something that I’ve thought about and in my journey in trying to understand how things work, I found the double slit experiment which was proof that an observer changing the outcome of the experiment means that reality is subjective for us humans. This is a profound mystery because we don’t know what it means, why it happens and how.
We’ve been lucky to have found it and demonstrate it.